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The materials which were used in corset making vary widely based on geographic location, and decade. Different materials fell in and out of fashion, and were also affected by world events and market pressures. A survey of mail order catalogs from the United States and Canada from 1900 to 1922 reveals some interesting trends in corset materials and colors. Although mail order catalogs will obviously not give a full picture of all available consumer options, as there were custom corset makers and high-end corset lines which had access to different materials and colors.

From 1900 to 1908, the most commonly available corset colors were white, black or drab, and they came in a wide variety of materials. Coutil was the most widely available corset fabric.

· Coutil, white or drab

· Sateen, black, white or drab

· Batiste, white, pink or blue

· Dainty flowered silk

· Roman cloth, black or white

· Italian cloth, black

· Silk brocade, with cream ground flowered in pink or lavender.

· Silk corset rep in white, pink, blue and black

· Light grey silk, flowered with pink rosebuds

· Blue and gold brocade

1905-1906 Fall Winter Macy’s Catalog

· Coutil, white or drab

· Fancy broche in white, pink and white, white and blue, or black

By 1908, the catalogs change to just offering white coutil, white batiste, or white jean as possible options. There are still a few special corsets, mainly nursing corsets, available in drab. Over the next few years, even drab is dropped from the list of colors available, and some catalogs don’t even bother to continue to list the color, just the fabric, since white was the only color option.

This continues until 1915, when pink becomes an option for high-end corsets. In January 1916, Warner Brothers begins advertising a line of Debutante corsets in brocade, batiste and coutil, in both white and pink. 4 Although pink does not appear in the mail-order catalog listings until the Fall of 1917, and then only in a few, the customers were buying pink corsets from retail stores.

In August 1917, the Canadian Dry Goods Review reports “New York is beginning to call white corsets “old-fashioned” so strongly are buyers taking up the pink lines.” 5

“The coutil models are selling best, with broches holding up well, but batistes are not so good. Pink, leads in the matter of colors, about ten pink corsets selling to one white. Practically no other color has assumed any prominence, although some orchid models have been featured and have sold quite well, and also a scattering of blue. There is a marked difference, for instance, between the demand that exists in this country and that which exists in South America. There the favorite colors are amber, blue, orchid, the palest of greens, and also some pink. An up-to-date window display in a high class corset shop in one of the South American capitals is almost kaleidoscopic in its bewildering color effects.”

“In the smaller towns throughout New England and the Middle West, as in the South, white corsets still lead. This is probably due to a sense of thriftiness, as a great many women are not yet convinced that colored and fancy corset materials wear fully as well as the plain white coutils.”

Although pink was now available alongside of white, those would be the only colors available to the catalog buyer through the end of the Teens and into the Twenties, and by the end of the Twenties, pink would be the main color option, with only a few corsets being offered in white

· Silk-finish Brocade, White or Flesh Pink

· Mercerized Brocade, Flesh, Pink or White

· Mercerized Brocade, white or flesh-pink

· Cotton brocade, pink

· Brocade, flesh colored

During the period 1900-1922 there were several boning options available: whalebone, or an imitation; steel boning; and later, spiral boning.

In the early 1900s, whalebone was still commonly available, and used in high-end corsets. By 1909 however, the whaling fleet was in decline, due to a limited number of whaling ships, smaller number of whales and much lower prices for whalebone, because of the many substitutes 7 available. The imitation whalebones, such as “Ariston Boning” and “Wahlon”, were advertised as being rustless, without odor, and much cheaper to use than whalebone. However, corsets fully boned with whalebone were still being advertised in August 1909. 8 But by 1913, the Spirella catalog commented on how impossible whalebone was to obtain for corsets, 9 and recommends ladies switch to corsets boned with their flexible wire bones.